"The Essence of Provence" evening in April 1998 began with drinks of kir, tarte au camembert and olive tapenade. Cartoons by a club member's friend, Sean Seamu, including "The Group," are kept in the club scrapbook along with wine labels, menu notes and the original list of club rules.

Each month they would pick a style of cooking and create a multicourse extravaganza together. They'd encourage adding to the festive, authentic feel with tableware, decorations, costumes, maybe even music.

Though the other two couples dropped out in the early days, the Gigers and Marriotts recruited their long-term buddies Kay and Jer Reeves of Seattle and Gayle and Roy Salisbury of Bellingham. Today, three decades and a new millennium later, the eight friends still meet regularly for eating, drinking and laughing. Now in their 50s and 60s, three of the couples have grandkids. The club has survived all kinds of ups and downs — political, economic, professional, personal. But through it all, they stuck together.
 

A page from a club scrapbook shows that "Switzerland" was the theme when the club met in October 2001. Appetizers from the Marriotts included cheese fondue ("usually prepared by the man of the house"), pickled onions, grilled sausages and homemade cornichons. Dick and Janet Giger were in charge of bread and a salad of baby greens with blue cheese.

For those of us who had almost given up on the idea of continuity and community in today's frenetic world, there's hope! "This will never fizzle," says Helen Marriott of Queen Anne Hill. "We're a perfect fit. We all love to cook and eat and travel."

The club rules, developed 30 years ago and still in effect today, are simple and clear:

• Everyone — that means men and women — does the cooking.

• No one gets to practice. The goal is to experiment on the group.

• Each dish must be authentic and well-researched.

• Everything must be made from scratch — no cheating!

All four couples take turns hosting the dinner club. The hosts concoct the theme, prepare the main course and decorate the table, which gets fairly elaborate. Other couples take on either the appetizer, dessert or salad and bread. Over the years, as their financial situations improved, they began to spice things up with cocktails, liqueurs or other beverages from the region to accompany each course. And they were serious about that rule of making things from scratch — even ethnic specialties such as Indian flatbread and Swedish limpa bread. They whip up the courses in their own kitchens, bring necessary serving dishes and whisk the dirties away to make it easy on the host. That's a rule, too.

As party souvenirs, the host creates scrapbook pages for all the couples. The evening is captured with pictures, wine labels, menus in the authentic language of the cuisine, and notes about guests or interesting research. The now-bulging scrapbooks tell colorful stories:

The Hungarian dinner with a gypsy theme, violin centerpiece and ribbons hanging from the chandelier. The Holland night with tiny windmills and crocuses on the table. The Russian experience when they made their own vodkas with pepper, wheat and hay. The Italian Christmas Eve feast called "Night of the Seven Fishes." The German meal with homemade gingerbread house. The early-American dinner when they wore 17th-century costumes, plus one pig mask!
 

	Dressed for the part as hostess, Helen Marriott presides over the table set for an Indian feast in 1974. The women taught themselves how to wrap saris for the occasion.

"The best part about the club is the friendship, of course, but also that we've learned so much over the years about different parts of the world," Helen Marriott says. "We take the research very seriously and use old cooking magazines, the Internet, the library and people with other cultural backgrounds. It's very much a study group, but it's not dry at all — there's a lot of laughter."

In the club's early days, they didn't have fancy dishes or decorations, and ethnic ingredients were hard to come by in Seattle. Once the Reeveses hosted an ambitious Japanese dinner and called on local restaurant Bush Garden for advice. The restaurant ended up loaning the group an entire set of traditional dishes for the dinner. Marriott recalls another time seeking out a Moroccan restaurant to find then-obscure preserved lemons.

Despite the studious approach, it's a forgiving crowd. Inevitably there's one dish that bombs — another excuse for laughter and fun. "We've always been so supportive of each other," says Janet Giger. "It's not a contest. We just celebrate the wonderful dishes and laugh at the ones that go in the garbage disposal."

In this day and age when people play hopscotch across the country and half the couples split up, it's a wonder these eight people have stayed together. How have they done it? "It's so much fun," Marriott says. "We'll do this until we're too old to move."
 

Club members pose and joke with Fandango chef Christine Keff after a night out at the restaurant in December 2000. From left: Helen Marriott, Janet Giger, Jer Reeves, Dick Giger, Keff, David Marriott, Kay Reeves, Roy Salisbury and Gayle Salisbury.

To couples interested in starting a dinner club, these "pros" offer some advice: Find friends who enjoy cooking, eating and drinking. Keep it simple. Divide responsibilities four ways. Don't worry about failure.

The Gigers' niece, Amy Anderson, and her friend Anne Nielsen are following this advice as they begin to make traditions and memories of their own. The two started a dinner club a couple of years ago with several young couples who don't have children yet. The group meets every other month and picks a theme. Everyone brings a dish with recipes to share.

"We all work and are really busy, so sometimes we pick easy themes," says Nielsen of Seattle. "But we hope to learn a lot and get more advanced. It's a good excuse to entertain in other people's homes and see each other on a regular basis.

"I hope we're still doing this in 30 years," Nielsen says. "These are my very best girlfriends. We were all in each other's weddings and have been friends for about 12 years. I want to maintain these friendships years down the road, and this is a great way to do it. We all love food and wine, but the main thing is spending time together."

The Marriotts and the Gigers couldn't agree more.